POMARJ scenario released!

[Cyrion]

Originally posted by fairline
Nice one Vincent

Is that Roman's-in-China scenario next on your list?

It's Roman's-not-in-China

But yes, it's next, with a (much improved) ToT version of Discworld!

[Boco]

I'd love to see someone post a player's log of this one. Any chance of that, or would it have to contain spoilers?

[Cyrion]

Originally posted by Boco
I'd love to see someone post a player's log of this one. Any chance of that, or would it have to contain spoilers?

Yes, it would find it interesting too!

And as far as spoilers go, I don't think it would be really critical??

[Broken Hawk]

As hard a time as I am having, I do not think you would find any spoilers in my log.

[duke o' york]

Is it something along the lines of:
Turn 1: capture Blue
Turn 2: lose most of my units
Turn 3: lose Blue and most of what remained of my units

repeat....?

[Broken Hawk]

How did you know?

[AGRICOLA]

This is indeed a finely crafted scen. The attention to detail is incredible, especially the highly useful descriptions of civilization advances. Very nice piece of highly original work.

I'm at week 61 and busily fighting both the humanoids and the kobolds; have managed to kill ~300 monsters of all shapes and sizes (what a bloodbath); hold Blue, Twin Fangs, Deep Roots, Vile Rune and High Tree with roads linking all of them and ample irrigation for growth; have delivered the first 3 merchants to Eldredd and have sent 4 more on their way; the Free treasury is in good shape; have managed to research 16 new techs and have a current rate of a tech every 3 weeks.

I don't know if I can finish scen within 300 turns, there are simply too many monsters being spawned. The scen started with ~130 of the %#@*}!, 300 have been wiped and now there are ~210. Maybe my careful, defensive play is at fault because, so far, Free casualties have been very minimal.

I'm cussing the lack of cheap units to block monster spawning locations behind the front line. Adventurers and rangers are OK but there are so few that I may have to build some merchants for that purpose. Also, despite the road network, the many units spawned in Blue will take longer and longer to walk, ride or fly to the front. It would be nice if there were alternate spawning locations in cities to the west. Also, I do wish that warships had carrier rather than transport flags so that deep amphibious strikes were possible and mages or dragons could provide air cover for the critical convoys to Eldredd.

I'll post a log at the end of the scen.



EDIT: That must have been an awesome D&D game.

[Boco]

That's got my attention, Agricola!

In general, what do players wish/expect from the designer in the way of tips in a tough scenario?

[duke o' york]

Agricola, in ordinary Civ II (don't know if this works in scenarios too), then you can block spawning locations by building a terrain improvement on them. If a square has a road or irrigation, then it counts as civilised, and barbs cannot spawn there, in the same way that they can't spawn within your cities' radii. Try that.

[AGRICOLA]

@duke o' york
Great idea but it doesn't seem to work in scens. I just ran a test with Pomarj (MGE) and monsters were spawned on road squares. I can't tell about city ZOC's.

From Empire of the Rising Sun, I know for certain that, in TOT scens, hostile units can be spawned within city ZOC's as well as on squares with terrain improvements.

Bummer.

@Boco
In Pomarj, the Readme instructs players to use 2 nuke-type units only on the targets they were designed for. This is absolutely necessary to complete the scen.

Also in Pomarj, most units cannot be built but must be obtained by discovering techs. The approximate ratio is one spawned unit per 2 discovered techs. Tech descriptions indicate what unit will be spawned when a tech is discovered. This information is definitely needed.

However, there is no mention of the sad fact that, when a certain tech is discovered and an unnamed unit is spawned, it will cost the treasury several hundreds of gold pieces. There is a definite risk that this may empty the treasury and that a critical city improvement will get arbitrarily sold off at the end of the turn. I think that this one is a tossup as to both need to know and fairness.

Overall, players should have some tips on critical game play factors like the need to move fast to avoid losing, to expect money problems, that some units will depart and anything else that is much beyond the ordinary.

I find that it is well worth reading scenario development threads before playing.

[duke o' york]

Aha! The reason that building a road on the square doesn't work is because it's not barbs that are being spawned, but Humanoid units by events.

[Cyrion]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
@duke o' york
Great idea but it doesn't seem to work in scens. I just ran a test with Pomarj (MGE) and monsters were spawned on road squares. I can't tell about city ZOC's.

As Duke said, it's because they are not barbarians but event generated units!

I'm cussing the lack of cheap units to block monster spawning locations behind the front line. Adventurers and rangers are OK but there are so few that I may have to build some merchants for that purpose.

I use Adventurers and Militia for that!

However, there is no mention of the sad fact that, when a certain tech is discovered and an unnamed unit is spawned, it will cost the treasury several hundreds of gold pieces. There is a definite risk that this may empty the treasury and that a critical city improvement will get arbitrarily sold off at the end of the turn.

What's that???

Could you be more specific, I just don't get it???

[AGRICOLA]

I use Adventurers and Militia for that!

Merchants carrying food are 20 shields cheaper although they don't have the defensive strength of militia. However, I did use the prase "block monster spawning locations behind the front line" so their D is not all that important.

What's that???

Could you be more specific, I just don't get it???

Check description of Ulek Merchant Ship tech as well as one other tech.

Having been burned by the Merchant Ship tech and suspecting a rat, I made sure that the treasury contained only 9 gold when the other tech was discovered.

[Cyrion]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
Check description of Ulek Merchant Ship tech as well as one other tech.

You're right!

I had forgotten that!

I had decided that Ulek wouldn't GIVE their Merchant and War ships, but sell them instead...

Well spotted!

[AGRICOLA]

I can't tell if is this an particularly clever, subtle but nasty piece of scen design or something that nobody who has played this scen from start to finish has noticed?


Everything was going well on turn 92 with Free cities having 11 trade arrows per trade route with Elredd. On turn 93 the number of trade arrows dropped to 9. On turn 94 the number dropped to 7. WTF was going on? This was messing up my scheme for getting techs on 8 consecutive turns whenever a ship with 4 freights arrived at Elredd.

After checking that the discovery of techs was not responsible, I finally looked at the Wild Coast civ.

ARRRGH! OH S**T!

On turn 91, its government was a Free City (Democracy). Squares around the city were generating 4 trade arrows and there was no excess food for growth.

On turn 92, the government had changed to Martial Law (Despotism) and the number of trade arrows was down to 3 per square but the food was still adequate.

The following turn, the ocean trade arrows had decreased to 2 and the city was short 3 foods.

I assumed that, somehow, my game had been corrupted. With a bit of hex-editing, I managed to restore everything and things were OK until turn 100, when the number of trade arrows in Blue again dropped from 12 to 9. Obviously, this was a recurring problem and not a one-shot corruption, so I dug a bit more deeply.

The problem lies in Elredd (size 23) building Impassable units until it has used up all the 64 available shields to support them and then continues to build at a rate of 7 shields per turn. This causes the AI to switch government from Democracy (1 shield per unit) to Despotism (1 shield for every unit above city size) in order to free up shields. This makes sense from the AI’s point of view. I’ve attached saves of turn 99, where everything is normal, and turn 100, where things go haywire.

The solution is to start the scen with adequate Impassable units in Elredd and have the city produce Foreign Support (Capitalization). This is what I finally did and it works fine.


While we are on the topic of governments, I have a bit of a problem with the Free civ using Monarchy. It really is not meant for large empires. Monarchy is fine in other regards but its high level of corruption reaches 80% for a huge empire such as Pomarj. Admittedly, a high level fighter like Wilfried is usually not too bright (I’ve played a lot of DD) but even he would somehow have figured out that having a Sherriff (Courthouse) as a buildable city improvement would let him squeeze a few more coppers from the dirty peasants. IMHO, 40% maximum corruption would seem more reasonable.